Food

Food should be good for you. But some foods aren’t. Pesticides are sprayed on millions of acres every year and some of them end up on your food. Our broken farm subsidy system encourages over production of the wrong food. EWG is pushing for better policy and more sustainable ways of farming that produce healthy food in a healthy environment.

Although scientists and government regulators have known about the ever-present threat of arsenic in drinking water, emerging evidence is showing that arsenic, a known human carcinogen, also contaminates many otherwise healthy foods that contain rice.

Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers.

Panera Bread's announcement today to remove EWG's 'dirty dozen' food additives and other ingredients from its food by 2016 is the latest sign that more and more companies are stepping up in support of healthier food made with 'cleaner' ingredients.

More than 90 percent of Americans want GMOs to be labeled because they want the right to know what’s in their food. One important reason to be informed is that growing GMOs has led to a massive increase in the use of weed killers that can harm people’s health.

Food and biotechnology companies opposed to mandatory labeling of foods that contain genetically modified food ingredients have disclosed expenditures of $63.6 million in 2014 to lobby for legislation that made reference to GMO labeling.

Dietary guidelines need to inform consumers of the dangers of mercury in certain seafood and provide clear labeling of added sugars in food. These are key elements for establishing effective guidelines that promote healthy, sustainable diets.

The widely-used herbicide glyphosate, now classified as a probably carcinogenic to humans by the World Health Organization, has been found in a number of items, including honey, breast milk and infant formula, according to media reports.

A new EWG analysis has found propyl paraben, a preservative linked to hormone disruption and not allowed in food sold in the European Union, in nearly 50 U.S. snack foods, including Sara Lee cinnamon rolls, Weight Watchers cakes, Cafe Valley muffins, and La Banderita corn tortillas.

American growers sprayed 280 million pounds of glyphosate on their crops in 2012, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. That amounts to nearly a pound of glyphosate for every person in the country.

The use of glyphosate on farmland has skyrocketed since the mid-1990s, when biotech companies introduced genetically engineered crop varieties (often called GMOs) that can withstand being blasted with glyphosate. Since then, agricultural use of the herbicide has increased 16-fold.

In response to the World Health Organization’s decision to classify the weed-killer glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” Monsanto’s top executive pulled out the rhetorical machine guns, launching an all-out attack against the prestigious international health agency and its scientists.

The renewable fuel standard, the federal law that year after year requires refiners to blend more corn ethanol into gasoline, has caused millions of acres of grasslands to be plowed up and added millions of tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere, a new study confirms.

A Washington Post editorial this week (March 30) came out in support of legislation introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) that would block states from requiring that genetically engineered foods (often called GMOs) be labeled and codify a voluntary labeling system that has never worked.